Mystery of the Masked Man
by Kibi Tosame
Summary: This is an Akatsuki-centric story based around the revelation of the identity of Tobi. However, Obito isn't the leader here but was drafted into the organization like the rest. Still pretending to be a goofball and a knucklehead to the majority, but whose prowess is known by both Pein and Konan. He's selected for a special solo mission where things go far from what was intended.


This is an Akatsuki-centric story revolving around the identity of Tobi. However, Obito isn't the leader here, but was drafted into the organization like the rest. Still pretending to be a goofball and a knucklehead to the majority, but whose prowess is known by both Pein and Konan. And he's selected for a special solo mission where things go far from what was expected.

Tobi in this version still helped with the Uchiha massacre, tried to destroy Konoha through the control of the nine-tails, was saved by Madara, adopted his ideology, and who still has a vendetta towards the Shinobi world and Kakashi for failing to save Rin. Hope you enjoy!

_*****__Italicized sentences are inner thoughts. _And yes, I'm purposely interchanging Tobi and Obito; hope it's not bothersome.

* * *

Obito tried. Obito tried desperately to open his eyes, but they were aching and heavy. They felt odd. He tried to move; he had to find out where he was. He didn't know why, but he knew he was there for something important. But as he tried to move, everything washed over his body in an electric flood of sharp agonizing pain.

It was intolerable.

An agonized cry caught in his throat from the sudden shock of it. His wrists bore all his weight, clasped in chains which held out his arms outstretched, raw bloody groves digging deep into them. His knees and legs were abraded with filth-infested wounds from constant skirting over the blood-covered stone floor, ramming into it as a result of desperately kicking out, from both the pain and from attempts of escape. He'd say those were the ones that bothered him if he felt them, however, they didn't compare to the those strewn across near every crevice of his body, where there bore deep, gouged, roughly-made, and carefully selected lesions, burns, lacerations, gashes, and contusions of where they had been torturing him. He had forgotten why he was there, letting himself suffer. He raised his head, staring into the darkness, gasping for air. It was something important; he knew that. And something he found out recently made him angry, _very_ angry, but _what_ was it? What was he _doing_ there? What inhibited the regeneration of his body granted by the Senju D.N.A. from healing his wounds, how was he captured, and WHY – WHY WAS HE THERE? His eyes rocketed in his skull trying to simply see. There was a shadow within the ebbing dark.

_What am I looking for? Who?_

**\- 4 Days Earlier -**

Deidara and Tobi were travelling on the outskirts of non-shinobi territory where civil unrest has been growing in a small city. They were sent by Pein to gauge the situation, as there looked to be opportunities to offer their _particular_ type of services. And Tobi was playing his absolute favorite game! 'Mess with Senpai~ !'

"LA! LA! La lalalala! La lala, LA! LA! La lalalala! We're just blankety-blank-blank, NO GOOD!" Tobi swished his arms around as he sang shrilly, laughing in a high-pitched maniacal way. Not a care in the world, this jovial lad.

"TOBI, HN!"

"Yes, Senpai~ ?"

"Don't you add that heart to it, hn! Just shut up for Kami's sake!" Deidara faced Tobi and glared at the man with seething hatred. "You're an embarrassment to the organization, always doing things like that, hn! ALWAYS acting like a good-for nothing child! Are you a shinobi or aren't you, hn?!"

"Uh, Senp-"

"Listen to your damn 'Senpai' for once, Tobi! And another thing: you still haven't-!"

"SENPAI LOOK OUT!"

Deidara face-planted into solid earth. Arms splayed out in front of him in a failed attempt to catch himself.

"Pfft-"

"BWAHAHAHAHA! SENPAI! You TRIPPED! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA *inhaaaaaaaaaaale* HAA-! HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!" Tobi was wheezing, doubling over in laughter, gripping his stomach, pointing at his dear poor ego-trodden Senpai. Deidara slowly stood up, spitting dirt out of his mouth. His eye carefully locked onto Tobi, white with rage.

"HAHAHA- huh?" Deidara's glare directed at Tobi was menacing, as if saying, "I will _kill_ you."_ Yeah, "-with an explosion,"_ Tobi finished the thought.

Silence.

"Pfft-" And there, Tobi went up in a blaze of glory, launched about 10 kilometers away, screaming in in his usual horror whenever being blown up by Deidara. Deidara continued walking as if nothing happened. "Hn," he hnned satisfactorily once he was finished, clapping away the dust from his hands.

Though this time, Tobi's antics was more than just for the mere pleasure of tormenting the young man. It was true that Deidara tripped quite spectacularly, but he wanted him out of the way to search for the source of what he'd tripped over. It had been a wire that suddenly shot out from the underbrush, attached in the front with a medical acupuncture needle in place of a kunai for its added discretion and silence. Not even Obito as he watched it, heard it. It was such a minute and precise movement that he's not surprised Deidara in his rage didn't notice. This was an expert execution of stealth and precision, unusual except for only Jonin-level and above, which was especially strange in this shinobi-devoid area. Obito knew there had been a chakra source they'd been coming up on in the surrounding woods about 500 meters tangential from their path keeping a low profile, but that was too good and too far to be a throw with something as light as an acupuncture needle, or was it? _Was it a machine or some sort of ninja tool? Closer and just remotely activated? A wind ninjutsu maybe? Why directed so low toward the base of the leg? Was the miss on purpose?_ Obito phased out of a tree returning to the place they had been. The barely visible string was slack as he knelt down held it, unlike its tautness it kept even after Deidara tripped over it. _In the time it took me to return, someone's removed whatever fired it out and then cut the string short to hide it's original length, or it could have just been some_one_ with a very skilled technique. _There was no trace of a device or how to tell the measure of distance it fired from. The needle had no angle to its trajectory, and the far distant shinobi was gone.

Tobi continued forward.

* * *

Ha haaaa... I feel like I'm putting potentially too much detail in this for it to be interesting. Is this interesting? Not too much? I mean, that won't stop me, but still. There's also a version I made where Deidara got a face full of poo, so that was fun. This is my first ever attempted fic, so let me know what you thought! This is only part one, i just wanted something out there.

And I don't really know by instinct the length of metric measurement. I'm American OOH-RAH. But it feels like it's appropriate because it's the system of measurement they use in Naruto.

I'm trying to keep going, but I'm not a natural writer. I actually hate English class the most (give me math) XD, it's the bane of my educational existence, what little of it there was, so this was as much as I could squeeze out at once. I mean, I squeezed it out in only a couple hours but still, there's nothing much to it yet, I'm creating as I'm going to eventually reach a 'maybe idea'.

Thanks and hope you enjoyed! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ


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